Diamond Mind Simulations Predict Dodgers and Red Sox to Win LCS, Meet in World Series

Oct 12 2013, 3:17am CDT | by PR.com

Imagine Sports utilized its Diamond Mind Baseball simulation software to project the results of Major League Baseball’s League Championship Series. Simulations showed the Dodgers and Red Sox as heavy favorites thanks primarily to more favorable pitching match-ups.

San Francisco, CA, October 12, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Imagine Sports has again employed its award-winning Diamond Mind Baseball software, widely recognized as the most statistically-accurate simulation...

Diamond Mind Simulations Predict Dodgers and Red Sox to Win LCS, Meet in World Series

Oct 12 2013, 3:17am CDT | by PR.com

Imagine Sports utilized its Diamond Mind Baseball simulation software to project the results of Major League Baseball’s League Championship Series. Simulations showed the Dodgers and Red Sox as heavy favorites thanks primarily to more favorable pitching match-ups.

San Francisco, CA, October 12, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Imagine Sports has again employed its award-winning Diamond MindBaseballsoftware, widely recognized as the most statistically-accurate simulation, to project the results of Major League Baseball’s League Championship Series. Diamond Mind utilizes proprietary algorithms to simulate each pitch of a baseball game, recalculating the odds after each pitch to account for the changing circumstances. The Diamond Mind software correctly projected all of the league division series. The simulations picked the Dodgers and Red Sox and that the both series would likely go four games (LA and Boston each did win in four games) and correctly picked the Tigers to win, most likely in five games (Detroitindeed won in five games). The Diamond Mind simulations showed the Pirates-Cardinals series to be a toss-up, giving the Pirates a slight edge – unless the series went the full five games, in which case St. Louis would be the favorite. As predicted, Pittsburgh missed its chance by failing to win game four, as the Cardinals did win game five.

After predicting the first round so accurately, what does the Diamond Mind software say about the LCS? To find out, Imagine Sports ran simulations for each of the current playoff series 1000 times to remove statistical “noise.”

National League Results
Despite the fact that the St. Louis Cardinals had the better record in the regular season and have home field advantage in this league championship series, the simulations show the Los Angeles Dodgers to be heavy favorites. The Dodgers won 79.2% of the simulation runs, with the most likely outcome being that the Dodgers win in six games or less. In fact, more than half of the simulation runs resulted in a Los Angles victory in either five or six games.

The reason? Pitching match-ups heavily favor the Dodgers. By winning in four games while waiting for the Cardinals to play five, the Dodgers set up their rotation to have two of this season’s best pitchers, Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw, start the first two games, while the Cards’ ace, Adam Wainwright, was needed to pitch game 5 against Pittsburgh and won’t be available to start until game 3 of this series. Further, the Dodger rotation features strong left-handed pitching to counter the left-handers that are key to the St. Louis line-up. The Cardinals, on the other hand, lack left-handed starters to counter the Dodger left-handed hitters. To make it even worse for St. Louis, LA’s right-handed hitters are far better than average against right-handed pitching.

American League Results
The Diamond Mind simulations of the ALCS show the Boston Red Sox as strong favorites over the Detroit Tigers. The Bosox won 654 of the simulation runs to 346 for the Tigers. However, the sim results show this series as much more likely to go the full seven games. Pitching match-ups are again the key, as Boston’s starting pitching matches up better against Detroit’s hitters than the Tiger pitchers do versus Red Sox hitters.

There are a few big wildcards to this series, however, and both involve two of the Tigers’ stars. One is Justin Verlander, who seems to have returned to his 2011 form, when he dominated the regular season en route to winning both the American League Cy Young and MVP awards. During the league division series versus Oakland, Verlander pitched 15 scoreless innings, giving up only 6 hits and 2 walks for an astounding 0.533 WHIP. To see what impact a rejuvenated Verlander might mean, Imagine Sports re-ran the simulations using Verlander’s 2011 stats to project his performance in this ALCS, and it makes a significant difference. If Verlander continues his dominant post-season performance, the simulations show the Tigers winning 460 times out of 1000, up from 346. The Red Sox would still be favored, but the Tigers’ chance increase dramatically if Verlander continues to pitch as he has thus far in this post-season.

On the other hand, there’s Miguel Cabrera, Detroit’s star hitter. Though his 2013 regular-season batting stats were even better than his MVP season in 2012, when he won a triple crown, Cabrera has not been hitting well since suffering a late-season groin injury. Despite a huge home run in game five of the ALDS against Oakland, Cabrera’s hitting in the series was weak. If that continues in the league championship series, Detroit’s odds are even worse. When the Diamond Mind simulation assumed Cabrera would hit like he has since suffering the injury, the Tigers win only 31% of the simulations.

Imagine Sports will run the Diamond Mind simulations again after each game to recalculate the odds for each team.

About Imagine Sports
Founded in 2005, Imagine Sports provides multiplayer online simulation sports games, including Diamond Mind Online, a baseball management game. The simulations were done using the Diamond Mind Baseball software, which was developed by renowned baseball statistics expert Tom Tippett. Diamond Mind is now widely regarded as the most sophisticated and realistic baseball simulation software and was named PC Magazine's "Editor's Choice" for pc-based baseball software.